Friday, January 25, 2013

Watching Art Blakey playing with or against Ginger Baker in 1973 is a little like watching your parents argue, only fun.

These are truly two of my favorite musicians on the planet and I say 'planet' because who knows where Art really is today and we do know that Ginger is still on the planet but far away, really, from me and my friends and therefore I think "somewhere on the planet."

I wonder how many minutes of my life I spent watching this little video. I wonder how many more I will spend watching it in years to come. It can't be too many. How could it be too many.

There is no better and worse, only more Art and less Ginger, more Ginger and less Art. Isn't is nice that they have such names. And isn't it nice that it went from smoldering something or other to love or something here on film in 1973, sort of.

Soon enough the long awaited documentary BEWARE OF MR. BAKER will be out for all to see. I can't wait. And I think the title is probably excellent advice.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

THE ZOMBIES at Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, North Carolina: July 29th 2012.

This band has been playing more or less neigh on 50 years (52 now) - and are still filled with love and hope and joy and I would like to say something funny but I can't - too much love and hope and joy in this band. How can I even start to be critical? Well, I guess I could complain that I was a little deaf after that night. But it wasn't their fault. It was the even older than me people, screaming, in my ear, in a happy state of geri-joy-mania.

The best thing about the concert? Well, one of the best? "Breathe Out, Breathe in." I loved it and chided myself for not knowing it and then forgave myself when I discovered that this 50+ year and still going strong band just wrote the thing. Take a sound gander of this wonderful evening. My money's on the bass man:

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Rolling in at 8 is the lamentably short-lived website, THE LAST SUPPER CLUB, which lasted, it seems, less than a year, but in that short space of time told of the last meals and moments of some fairly intriguing celebrities - Ernest Hemingway, Jim Morrison, Houdini, James Dean, Bela Lugosi, Epicurus(?!!) with short but poignant (and I don't use that word casually) recaps of their lives.

Do they also share the recipes for the last meals of the departed? They do. With one exception: the strikingly un-voodoo chile dinner of Jimi Hendrix: tuna fish on white bread, white wine and Vesperax. This one you have to figure out for yourself.

CODA: the James Dean tale led me to the website for Villa Capri, his favorite (and last) restaurant in Hollywood, where due to his natural shyness, they had a "table" reserved for him in the kitchen. I thought: wouldn't it be nice to have dinner there someday, and eat like the rebel without a cause – Dinner Salad with Italian Vinaigrette, Spaghetti with Meatballs, Tiramisu and Espresso?

Sadly, the locale was bulldozed in 1995. We can remember it through the following website, still active:

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

I could stare at RETRONAUT all day. Or I wish I could. Here is one of their very many wonderful ditties - FAMOUS LETTERHEADS: 1900-1997. It's so hard to choose what to post - if you have a look yourself you might see why. So here you go, just a few favorites...

Once upon a time there was a terrible Willy. Or perhaps many. Or perhaps they were very good Willies, indeed, decent Willies, and when terrible things happened, they took wing and flew out of the mouths of everyone who ever experienced such terrible things. For ever will one miss one’s Willes, but would one trade the experience of terrible things and losing decency for anything else this world less terrible that this world might offer, such as you? Sadly, no. Attention: this is your love song.

In old movies filmed in delicious places that you could eat like ice cream, the plain girl is always beautiful, just beautiful, and soulful, and lost. I once rated a movie 5 stars when a broken heart smiled at a receipt for her first lipstick, SEDUCTION, tore up the receipt, left it on the floor and walked away forever from the man who never loved her. I couldn’t help myself: I hugged the television set and told it that everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t. As for the rest of the movie, it was just ice cream.